


every story started when i found you on the page

by reas_of_sunshine



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Bittersweet, Commissioned Work, Drinking & Talking, F/M, Klondike Days/Late 1800s, Love Letters, One Shot, Smoking, again it was the 1800s, all the scroldie timelines mixed together, goldie has emotional baggage but that's a fic for another time, goldie sort of has a friend!!!, implied sex work, not for long but he's there, scrooge appears at the end tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 07:01:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24346933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reas_of_sunshine/pseuds/reas_of_sunshine
Summary: Goldie writes Scrooge a letter. You know the one.xxShe started it off with, "Greetings from Dawson,"And she concluded it with, "Despite everything—all my love, Goldie,"
Relationships: Scrooge McDuck/"Glittering" Goldie O'Gilt
Comments: 11
Kudos: 38





	every story started when i found you on the page

**Author's Note:**

  * For [carrobucks (neopuff)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neopuff/gifts).



> who doesn't love some scroldie 
> 
> a million thanks to carro for being my first ever commissioner !!! (??? is that what it's called i don't know things i'm gay) anyWAY if you would like your own personal ray of sunshine written by yours truly — see what i did there okay i'll shut up — you can hit up the link below and message me on tumblr  
> https://reas-of-sunshine.tumblr.com/post/618839827975127040
> 
> title is from gold by trixie mattel
> 
> enjoy!

Dawson was as busy as it had ever been. And it went without saying, that same busy nature spilled into the Blackjack Saloon. Goldie couldn’t remember the last time she worked this hard—well, that was a lie. And maybe an exaggeration. This wasn’t quite hard work, just… demanding.

Her throat was sore, the draft kept coming in and she had been singing all afternoon.

Thankfully, one of the newer girls was up on stage next, relieving Goldie of her spotlight. Usually, it warmed her, motivated her, kept her alive.

But all she had been able to do lately was stare at the door and hope to see a familiar face walk in.

Like _an idiot._

The oldest of the women who worked there noticed her shivering, slid a cup of coffee and a shot of whiskey her way. Goldie nodded her appreciation, hiding her gorgeous dress with a blanket. She stared into the chipped cup for a moment before pouring the alcohol into the coffee, taking a nice, long sip. She may not have gotten along with the other girls here, but at least they all took care of each other. They all had a familiar ache in their hearts (and wallets).

“Thank you, Loretta,” she mumbled. 

“The boys are especially gold-hungry tonight,” the wise, elder dog-woman mumbled. “If you catch my drift,”

Goldie swallowed a bit and nodded. Right. Her performances were the same as they had been before, but they weren’t getting the same tips they used to. She needed to put bread on the table for herself somehow. Even if she looked desperate, coming back to her roots at the saloon.

She hadn’t done _this_ since her teenage years, though. 

“I can chase off some of ‘em for you, though,” Loretta offered, almost sneering. “Some of them are real pigs— no offense, Claire,”

One of the girls, a pig, naturally, counting her tips for the evening merely huffed and looked away.

It was a little mean, but also a little funny as well. Goldie felt only a little bad for laughing, and took a sip of her coffee to cover it up. The new girl had a nice little croon to her voice, singing of love she had lost, love that was far off way somewhere…

...Goldie wasn’t trying to be bitter, but she hated love songs. Always so predictable. Sad and weepy, or full of unrealistic hope, no in between.

She’d much rather sing about something that couldn’t leave her, couldn’t break her heart.

Backstage was the only escape for the girls (literal girls, Goldie couldn’t believe they were even here) and women of the Blackjack Saloon. It was sort of their office; the place they shared stories about the customers, thought up schemes to make an extra buck or two and of course, took their breaks. Goldie accepted the cigarette and matches Loretta held out to her, anything to keep her warm on this bitter February evening.

As they smoked, as girls made their way from the rooms to the bar, as the songs were still sung to tug at heartstrings—well, Goldie was a naturally curious woman. She leaned across the rickety table, not like she needed to, really, and took a glimpse.

“Who’re you writing to?” 

Loretta paused and looked up from the journal she was writing in. Raised a thick eyebrow, slammed it shut.

Goldie shrugged. “Got a husband or something? Kids?” 

“And what does it matter to you, O’Gilt?”

“Calm down, Cagna, I’m not trying to steal anyone or anything from you,” She took a drag, but smirked around it. “At least, not this time,”

Loretta grimaced at her. They weren’t friends but being the oldest ones at the establishment gave the women a bit of a bond. “I like to write to my mother,” she said, her voice low. And then, she hesitantly reopened the book, flipping through the pages. “It’s everything I couldn’t say to her before I left Naples and before she… left me,”

Goldie almost bit on the end of the cigarette, taking a moment to think.

“Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to write letters to a dead woman,”

“It doesn’t,” Loretta sighed. “But it makes me feel better. Closure,” She fixed her journal, putting the elegant silk built-in bookmark on the page she was writing, before shutting it once more. “I can tell you miss someone, you know. Wouldn’t hurt you to try it,”

Goldie was tempted to laugh in her face.

But Goldie O’Gilt was not a talk about her feelings, write down her feelings, what-have-you type of woman. Feelings and her mixed about as well as water and oil.

She learned that one the hard way.

This time a year ago. 

It was getting near to Valentine’s Day too, wasn’t it?

Loretta put out her cigarette and went off to the bar. It was her turn to flirt with the men, to coax tips out of them with maybe an extra shot or two in their coffee, to be their shoulder to cry on. Goldie would be after her—and she gave up on the drugged coffee a while after coming back to the Blackjack. They caught on too quick.

The cigarette fizzled away in her hand and the coffee went cold.

She noticed the pieces of scratch paper on one of the many tables. She noticed Loretta had left behind her pencil. 

Goldie huffed. It was preposterous. It would be a waste of time.

Sure, Loretta was right in her assumption. Goldie did miss someone. She missed a lot of people. She had lost a lot of people in her life. But most recently? But for some reason, he couldn’t leave her mind? Even if he left her here, even after he promised and said all those wonderful things—

She grabbed the paper and pencil.

He’d never know. She’d write it and then, she’d burn it.

That would work. That would be her closure.

She started it off with, “Greetings from Dawson,”

.

.

.

Goldie didn’t notice the time pass by. She didn’t realize she had written on the front and back until she ran out of space. She didn’t know her hand was shaking until she signed the paper and the star on her i looked like a scribble. She didn’t think she’d feel like this by the time she was done.

And she concluded it with, “Despite everything—all my love, Goldie,”

She fell back against the chair’s backing and exhaled.

That’s what the letter felt like. A big, deep breath she had been holding this whole time. A scream she had been meaning to let out.

She couldn’t look at another word of it.

She folded it up with clumsy hands, she swiped an envelope from one of the girls purses, and she hid it away. She didn’t want to have to look at those words, to feel the way she felt ever again. 

Even if some part of it was so heartachingly wonderful.

She clutched the envelope. 

Something felt so wrong, so empty, so disappointing about an unaddressed envelope.

She tapped the pencil and thought where he’d be now—he did say to her that he wanted to go home, back to Scotland. He _had_ to go home. He wanted to introduce her to his family, he had to care for his mother because she was getting ill. It was a long shot but it wasn’t like it was going anywhere.

“Goldie?”

Loretta spoke with a smirk in her voice. Goldie almost shrunk under the tone.

“You took my advice,”

“I wrote this a while ago,” she lied.

Loretta threw the barmaid apron on the table and laughed. “Sure you did,” she said, taking back her cigarettes and matches. “Get to work already,”

Goldie huffed, taking the apron, grumbling to herself about how the bar was her least favorite and why did they always expect her to wrassle up the rowdy drunks, anyway— she took the apron.

She left behind the letter.

.

.

.

_She left behind the letter._

She realized that mid-shift, topping off the poor man’s fifth shot of the evening. She left the bottle for him in her frenzy, heading backstage, turning over jackets and blankets, ruining the girls card games, ignoring their complaints.

And then, the new girl spoke up. The one who had been singing so sweetly about her love back in Little Rock.

“Are you looking for something, Miss O’Gilt?”

Goldie hated when the girls called her that. She was still young, dammit— “Norma Jean, did you see a letter around here?”

Twirling her short blonde curls around her fingers in thought, Norma Jean scrunched up her beak in thought before beaming. “Oh, yes! I gave it to Rita, she was collecting the week’s mail. Don’t worry, I sealed it up and sent it out!”

She could have wrung the young swan by the neck and strangled her. But she didn’t. Of course she didn’t. 

It was Goldie’s own stupid fault. She unclenched her fists and thought to herself, it didn’t matter. It wouldn’t go anywhere. It would get lost in the postal system. Whatever poor idiot got her heart poured out on paper…

...it wouldn’t be her sourdough reading it.

The more she thought about it—maybe some part of Goldie did want Scrooge to read it.

At least he would know. At least she could be the one who had the final say.

.

.

.

Scrooge did go back to Dismal Downs. Fortunately, his mother’s health turned around. He found some things to fix the castle that was in shambles. He got to see how grown up his sisters were now. But he couldn’t stay.

If he wanted to do right by them, he had to keep pushing on. 

He made his way across the Yukon. He explored past his claim, and if he was given the right map, he’d mine his way down from Canada to Calisota. 

While Calisota was out of gold, they said, he was starting to think beyond that. 

It was full of real estate now. Income was income, and money was money. 

The bitter winter winds and snow were hell to travel through—and he wondered if Hell would be a more comfortable environment to traverse. He clutched his map tight, but apparently, not enough. The sharp wind tore it from his grip, the map dancing in the wind like it was taunting him. He panicked, and trampled through the snow, never mind his snowshoes coming loose and his bones trembling with every too-quick or too-slow movement—

He jumped in the air and caught it just in time. A little torn, but still the same.

He collapsed in the snow, coughing, trembling, fumbling when he saw a piece of paper in the endless white nearby. He shuffled through the tundra, assuming it was some of his map.

He was wrong.

“Bah,” he mumbled to himself. “Damn postal workers, always losing the mail,” 

Some poor unfortunate person’s letter was going to get delivered. He almost threw it back over his shoulder to let the wind take it somewhere else. Yet the handwriting made him halt. The squiggle of the cursive, the child-like wonder of starring i’s.

He recognized it.

And he was even more taken aback noticing it was addressed to him.

His hands trembled and not from the cold. He almost stopped—

—but the blizzard-like conditions urged him to keep moving forward. He grumbled in frustration, and tucked the letter in his jacket, in the pocket directly over his chest. In the pocket directly over his heart. Because she, and all of her words and anything she had to say, owned it.

“Goldie, _astór_ ,” he mumbled. “I’ll never be rid of ye, will I?”

Because he tried so hard to forget her. He really did.

But how could he when she was worth more than all the riches he could find in this frozen land? And why would she write to him?

.

.

.

Scrooge stared at the letter.

He had examined the handwriting countless times. He wondered why she wrote to him. But he had yet to find out what was inside the envelope. 

It had been years, decades since that blizzard in the Yukon. Since he spent the night in a cave and cried himself to sleep because he couldn’t decide what was worse, if Goldie still loved him or if she never wanted to speak to him again. Since he decided to not open it.

Despite all the technological advances throughout the years, the classic strongbox never let Scrooge McDuck down.

He figured it wouldn’t hurt now. 

He was a much older man; no longer a young, naive, confused young man who would be so easily wounded.

He still had Goldie in his life too, despite her signature Goldie ways.

He sat there at his desk, he heard his family cause some commotion downstairs. He had the strongbox off to the side, with her lock of hair and crimson ribbon. He took the letter out that rested underneath it. His hands trembled the same way they did on that bitter night of February, 1900. He broke the seal of the envelope.

And he mentally prepared himself.

And then, only then, did he read the first line.

.

.

.

_Greetings from Dawson,_

_Not like I have much of a choice since you left me here. What have we become, Scrooge? What happened to us? I think we were both fools. Me, for thinking someone could save me — and you, for having such grand ideas of taking me home with you, of being life partners, of making me Mrs. Goldie McDuck._

_I don’t think you did it to hurt me. I think you realized your mistake. I think you wanted to spare me the goodbye. Is that why you left? Because I don’t like goodbyes. I guess you figured that one out somehow._

_I’m back at the Blackjack but I will have to thank you, actually. You inspired me, with your naive wishes, to adventure, to explore the world. I’m not going to enjoy my life stuck in this frozen hellscape. I’m saving money to leave, to do something with my life. To see the States again. Maybe I’ll go back to Ireland too. Maybe I’ll swing by Scotland and say hi._

_Would you want to see me again? Or would you slam the door in my face?_

_I realize I never gave you an answer when you asked me a question. It’s yes, Scrooge. Of course it’d be a yes. I was too scared to admit that to myself last year. I know I’d brush you off with, “let’s make our fortune first” but it was yes._

_It’s not like this letter will ever find you, but if it did, I wonder what you’d say to me afterwards. Probably make fun of me for being all soft with you. You liked to do that. And I loved you for it. I still do. I’d like to see you again, if not to try again, to at least reminiscence, to congratulate you on the fortune I know you’ll make one of these days. You understood me and saw me as more than just the greedy harlot from Dawson. I can’t stay mad at you. I can be mad at you for leaving, but I can’t stay mad at you. You are wonderful._

_Despite everything— all my love,_

_Goldie._

**Author's Note:**

> fun random fact that has nothing to do with anything: my gay ass based loretta and norma jean off cher's character in moonstruck and the iconic marilyn monroe, respectively
> 
> this fic was made possible by comments like you!  
> ~reagan


End file.
